


A Candy-Coloured Clown

by Wirrrn



Category: Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Gay Sex, Gore, M/M, My Early Crush on Dan Jordan is Dismayingly Obvious, disturbing dream imagery, extreme violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 16:14:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2157024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene fic set between NOES 4: THE DREAM MASTER and NOES 5: THE DREAM CHILD. Dan Jordan is trying to cope with Freddy stalking both himself and his friends. Rick Johnson tries to help in his own inimitable way. Sex happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Candy-Coloured Clown

                                                **A CANDY COLOURED CLOWN**

                                                                                                by  
                                                                                             Wirrrn

  
  
                  
                                                                       "No... You can't die from insomnia..."  
                                                                                        (FIGHT CLUB)  
  
  
                                                                             "I'm scared to close my eyes  
                                                                         ...and I'm scared to open them..."  
                                                                              (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT)  
  
                   
                                                          "Thus stands the tale of how Death Became Sleep,  
                                                                             and Sleep became Death.  
                                                                            If the world was fearful before,  
                                                                                  it is more so now"  
                                                                           (Jessica Amanda Salmonson)  
  
                                                                                         *   *   *   *  


 

Dan Jordan's low moan reverberates through both his deep, sweat tracked chest and the tiled dentist gleam of the small, bright cubicle. Scalding water pumps from the shower and digs liquid fingers into his muscles, pummelling the weariness from his grateful body.  
  
The rest of the team has already showered, indulged in the low-key homoerotic roughhousing (that seems one of the official game rules, alongside proper mouth guard placement and the etiquette of post-touchdown victory whoops) and changed, before returning to their respective classes.  
  
Dan still showers. Delights in the sunshine sloth feel of the slow pulsing water, revels in this opportunity to be warm and naked and rested, after  
  
(quick glance at wristwatch)  
  
-five *days* of chain-chugging caffeine and coke, reading, watching television til dawn, anything to keep from  
  
...eyes blink closed under the womb warm water, the liquid heartbeat thrumming in the hair plastered to the sides of his head, lulling him into the siren song of slee...  
  
//No!//  
  
Dan's head jerks up   
  
//deer in the headlights//  
  
eyes starkwhitewide with panic. He isn't aware of his arm shooting out and wrenching the faucet violently a full turn. Later, he will wonder about the deep indentations in his palm.  
  
Cold water slaps him like an insult.   


Nipples gather up into tan, gooseflesh nubs, cock quiets down into a meek, y-chromosome whisper and he comes fully awake with a susurrus exhalation of shockbreath.  
  
Dan's blood is roaring through his veins like a bullet train through a subway tunnel. When strong, pale arms come from behind and wrap around his bare, fear-tight midriff, the young man is genuinely surprised that the ball of red, wet muscle doesn't simply punch its way out of his chest, crawl down his body and die on the shower floor.  
  
Those strong arms spin him around.   
  
Though the face regarding him triumphantly from less than a foot away is grinning madly, it is not the face he is expecting.

Instead of seared, fused together yellow-brown scar tissue on a roasted skull, there is pale, unmarked skin set in a somehow elfin cast over a strong, square jaw.  Rather than raging, fried egg eyes are deep brown pools that shine with mischief, not madness. The battered fedora that should be perched on the head is instead a Gordian knot of spiky black hair, sticking out in all directions like a Muppet's.  
  
"~Rick?! Jesus!!"  
  
The smaller man quirks a friendly brow.

"The comparison has been made before" he nods "though usually in more intimate circumstances... Though you *are* bare-ass naked, so I guess this counts..."  
  
Dan's mouth has already mostly completed the stunningly scathing retort "Blow me, Johnson", when his brain taps him on the shoulder and reminds him that he's wet and naked and standing well within kissing distance of his very attractive, very male best friend.

His very attractive, very male best friend with an impulse problem and a questionable view of Right and Wrong, at that.   
  
His brain also tells him that he didn't just feel his cock leap like a trained porpoise when he thought of Rick hitting his knees, bringing that sardonic Grinch-grin a few beats closer and...  
  
Rick's smile increases in wattage as the big jock trying very hard to look affronted before him colours a fetching shade of rose all over his face and chest, before grabbing for a towel. By the time Dan's shaking fingers have finally knotted the coarse, sensually abrasive blue cloth about his waist, Rick's lips have practically met corners around the back of his head.  
  
"So. Dan-of-Finland..." He rolls laughing eyes Southward just to see his large friend go all debutante again.  "...We were s'posed to meet for lunch, remember? Present a united front in the face of School Cafeteria jello?"  
  
Dan is finding it har... difficult... to shut off the water. For some reason, the faucet is jammed open.   
  
"Huh?" absently, over his shoulder. "Oh, yeah; sure man~ I'll meet you there after History."  
  
Rick takes the safety off a killer eyebrow and lets it fly. "Body *and* brains of a horse, huh Jordan? History was like, three classes ago."  
  
The manic air softens at Dan's obvious bewilderment.  
  
"Seriously, big guy- I was getting worried about you. Couldn't find you anywhere all day, and it's only twenty minutes 'til school's out."  
  
Chestnut hair darkened ebony by water flips into Dan's eyes as he shakes his head. "No way; I checked my watch a minute ago, and it's only-"  
  
Dan's head dips down.  
  
And holds there.  
  
"Three... thr... God. Good God, Rick! I've been here for *four* fucking *hours*!"  
  
Dan sags and the wall reaches out to hold him upright. "How could I not notice? It was... just a minute...and I... I..."  
  
Dan turns and beats both fists against the tiles, angry and frightened.  
  
"Alice was right... He's coming for us... He could have taken me anytime, but he's...toying with me..."  
  
"Dan..."  
  
The hand has returned to his shoulder, gentled.  
  
"...God..."  
  
"Dan. Let me help you."  
  
Dan's shoulder muscles twitch, horse skittish, throwing Rick's hand.

"Could anyone help Kristen? Sheila? No-one can do anything."  
  
"Yes, I can."  
  
This time the hand went straight for the towel around Dan's waist, tugging it free and stroking the muscular globes of his ass.  
  
Dan turns around, wonder and shock in his dark eyes, a question on his lips. Rick simply smiles, gently rather than manic this time, and kisses Dan's eyes gently closed, takes the question from Dan's mouth with his tongue.  
  
The big jock hesitates for one moment more, and then he's kissing back, his hands are joining the smaller man's in a journey over the latitudes and longitudes of each other's personal geography.  One or other of them turns the water back on, and Dan pulls Rick flush with him, clothes and all, under the spray.  
  
Rick's squid-ink burst of hair soon becomes gravid with water and falls in heavy clumps down his face, brow and neck. His white t-shirt and black jeans are soaked through, stuck to his body. He is a Selkie, slick from the ocean, deciding on whether to wear the form of man or seal. He is a merman, rising from the deep, waiting for his soul. He is Michelangelo's wettest dreams made flesh, and Dan Jordan finds the sight of his best friend soaked to the cloth more arousing than any nudity ever could be. His cock pulses fatly against the wet fabric at Rick's groin.  
  
Rick nods his understanding and drops his hands from their task of peeling the shirt from his wet belly, instead allowing them to continue their steady downward journey, trawling down wet denim with its odd, starchy smell, until he finds the zipper- metal teeth dripping wet like an old man eating soup. He slides the zipper down, and kisses Dan again.  
  
And it's out now and Dan can't take his eyes off it-his own nudity not really registering, not sexual, the product of a thousand hours in the locker room, until now-  
  
("Gotta get nude to get clean" said his coach to those who attempted to shower in their boxers or briefs)  
  
But Jesus, he's standing in Rick's arms, with Rick's mouth kissing salty, hot roses on his chest, looking at Rick's erect cock pulsing and proud and jutting fee of the soaked denim, and damn if this isn't really about to happen.  
  
Dan breaks off their current kiss, soothing the move by reaching out to caress a path down Rick's jaw, thrusting their cocks together and creating a burst of pyrotechnic hormone heat, so that his friend doesn't read the break as rejection. It's simply a pause for much needed breath- Dan's ever-reliable quarterback lungs have become those of an asthmatic vole thanks to his rising excitement.  
  
"...Rick...want you; Could we.... can you...?"  
  
It's been a while since Dan last had sex with another man  
  
(two years ago, the day before Halloween and Dan's eighteenth birthday party. He'd tried to keep in touch with the guy, a bedroom-eyed stud by the name of John Tate, but Tate had moved back to Illinois not long after, to “deal with his uncle”)  
  
and Dan really needs Rick to take the lead.  
  
Besides (and perhaps because of) Dan being the stereotypical Sports Illustrated Football Beefcake, the girls and occasional guys he sleeps with take one look at his height and build, think he's all caveman muscle mass and lie back, demanding he ravish them.

Well- Dan Jordan has ravishing needs too, dammit, and right now there's nothing he wants more than for his smaller, slighter friend to fuck him.  
  
Rick reads his mind with a nod and a crescent flash of teeth bared in both humour and hunger, and turns the larger man to face the tiled wall, brow resting on all that white that somehow still remains cool to the touch despite the hot water splashing on it, deflected onto the tiles by their writhing, joined bodies  
  
(and Oh God the feel of Rick's long, clever hands on the bare-bird bones of his hips is almost enough to make Dan come right there).  
  
Rick kisses everything he can reach- the side of Dan's neck, skin beating taught over pulse points with every heart-thrum; gentle seashell curve of an ear; magnificently broad, tan shoulders with erotic corporeal constellations of freckles dusting them.  
  
Dan senses rather than sees Rick going to his knees behind him, and catches his lower lip in his teeth, worrying it with anticipation. When his friend's tongue slides wetly between his ass cheeks and laps at his tight, peppery hole like a fat, lecherous slug, Dan is so taken by the sensation of this divine depravity that he nearly bites his lower lip right off.  
  
Rick manages somehow to keep fucking Dan with his tongue even when he finally peels the rest of his wet clothing off and throws it on the floor like a cast off skin, leaving him shiny, new and beautiful beneath. He smiles against the cheeks as he pumps the slick red muscle between them. One hand steadies the big jock's shuddering, backwards-thrusting hips, the other slides between thickly haired thighs to caress the roiling, pendulous balls, hefting them in their musky, coarse-haired sac.

Moving to the long, juddering shaft now, the meaty nugget of flesh marking the circumcision scar beneath Dan's cockhead rolling between Rick's fingertips like the knot tied at the end of a balloon.  
  
Dan is huffing great lungfuls of air out through his nostrils like a winded dragon. Tension, building in the planes of his stomach, begins to send out warning signals downwards and inwards, to his core. He is close.  
  
"You getting... on board, Johnson?" He manages, smiling over one shoulder at his friend. "Or should... I just come...without you?"  
  
After eight years of friendship, Dan really should know better than to goad impulsive people by now. The slow heat in Rick's chocolate eyes catches fire with an  
  
//whuuumph//   
  
almost audible whoosh, and the irises are suddenly molten pools of lava-lust, burning any lingering vestiges of the two men's restraint into unrecognizable ashes.  
  
Rick *surges* forward, turning Dan's head and kissing him possessively at the same time, with a shuddering hump of his hips.  
  
Rick mounts his friend from behind, sliding his wet cock deep into Dan's ass. Rick gasps as he is sheathed to the balls in Dan's body, peristaltic squeezes from ringed muscles swallowing him ever deeper into slick heat until he bottoms out.

  
This is the first time they've been together  
  
//outside of certain fleeting thoughts they'd had during moments of friendly intimacy, moments alone, thoughts they'd turned from without examining//  
  
and both men are highly excited, and very close already anyway, so it takes no more than a dozen short, chopping Rick-thrusts before both men come, their guttural, choked yells bouncing around the small, tiled room like frightened bats.  
  
-Dan gasps as he feels Rick's cock spasm deep inside him, the hot pulse of fluid.  
  
-Rick grins as he watches Dan moan and shudder like a gaffed fish, before coming all over the wall in front of him. Mother-of-pearl semen trickles down, as though the tiles are melting from their passions.  
  
After remembering how his legs support his bodyweight, the big jock steps forward, disengaging himself from Rick  
  
(the smaller man's cock flops free with a slick pop)  
  
then turns on one heel and takes Rick in his arms, lowering them both down to the slatted wooden bench that runs the length of the room on one side. The boys kiss, grope and pet for a while longer, then sit back to catch breath, their arms folded behind their heads, sitting as close to each other as possible.  
  
Dan smiles. "Thanks, man".  
  
Rick moves one arm down around Dan's shoulders. "Anytime."  
  
Dan scoops his gym-bag off the floor, kisses Rick again  
  
(gentle this time, on the brow)  
  
and begins dressing, blushing slightly when, bending to slip a foot through the leg of his jeans, he feels the spider-silk tickle of Rick's gaze crawling over his hip-shot ass.  
  
Glancing now and his friend's ruined clothes  
  
-soaking wet and ripped free of buttons and zippers-  
  
Dan shakes his head and mock-winces.  
  
"Hey guy- looks like you'll be walking home naked! Talk about the scenic route!"  
  
At Rick's killer eyebrow, Dan breaks into a huge, warm grin. "Nah, on second thought, we wouldn't want you to catch cold; I've got plans for those tonsils of yours tonight..."  
  
He rummages through the gym-bag  
  
-pauses-  
  
and throws Rick a towel.  
  
"Thanks, Dan." Rick wraps the red and green striped cloth around his waist, ties it off and ambles over to the toilet cubicles across the room whilst Dan finishes dressing.  
  
Beats of silence, then Rick's voice. "Dan?"  
  
Dan looks up. "-You want me to come help dry your nooks and crannies?"  
  
"-Jordan. C'mere. Now."  
  
Rick's voice is cold, flat riverbed stone. Dan can't remember ever hearing anything but happiness in it before.  
  
Shirtless, wearing only his jeans and sneakers, Dan jogs over. "What is it?"  
  
Rick indicates one of the toilet stalls. The door is closed, but not locked. An odd buzzing noise can be heard, and a strange, sickly sweet smell, like burnt caramel, fogs the air.  
  
Dan pushes the door. It gives, slightly, but stays shut. He tries again, harder.  
  
"..Won't open."  
  
"Of course it'll open! You're the jock- get all... jock-y!"  
  
Another push, another give of no more than an inch.   
  
"Seriously, guy, it's a no go. We could maybe go find the janito-  
  
"-Oh, for fuck's sake!" Rick's voice is guttural, annoyed. "It's just a little stiff!" He moves to the door and shoves, hard. "My grandmother could open the _oooof_!"  
  
-Dan swings the gym bag with all his strength and Rick goes flying, crashing through the flimsy door to sprawl of the filthy toilet floor within.  
  
Grabbing a nearby mop, Dan breaks it off over his leg and brandishes the jagged splinter-point, standing over his fallen friend.  
  
"You think I'm fucking stupid, * _Krueger_ *? My towel's blue, not red and green striped; you really should think about adopting a less giveaway colour scheme."  
  
Sprawled on the slime-encrusted floor, Rick looks up at the jock, sneering.   
  
Then.  
  
Lean, alabaster flesh coarsens, blisters, *melts*, flesh dripping like tallow into ugly knots of yellowy-pink scar tissue.

The red and green towel twitches, then crawls up and over the seared chest and arms, morphing into a striped, moth-eaten sweater. Shadows gather at the legs and feet, coalesce into filthy black pants and scuffed grey shoes.  
  
Smiling terribly, snicking the razored claws of his gloved right hand against a dry scarecrow-thigh with a deadly tempo, Freddy Krueger climbs to his feet and doffs his battered felt hat in the young man's direction.  
  
"Wham, bam, thank-you * _Dan_ *!" he cackles.  
  
Dan levels his makeshift spear in the creature's direction. "Freddy; I knew it was too much to hope Alice'd kicked your fried ass to Hell for good."  
  
Freddy hawks black, tarry phlegm at Dan's feet for speaking the hated name.

"Alice? The wannabe Dream Guardian? Hahahahaha! That ginger bitch couldn't protect a dreaming toddler from Willy Wonka! Besides..." A dark leer "...Alice doesn't live here anymore. Probably off somewhere with the Cheshire cat, or playing ball games with the Queen."  
  
A shimmer, and Freddy becomes Rick again- naked, seductive and smiling.  
  
"...But then she's not the only one, eh, Danny-Boy?!"  
  
The dream demon grins and moves to one side, opening the toilet door *next* to the stuck one and revealing the source of the strange sound and odour.  
  
Rick, slumped dead on the toilet- pants around his ankles, eyes open but dull, non-reflective, the eyes of a puffer-fish washed up on a beach. Four deep, vertical slash marks are gouged in his stomach. A large number of yellow-jackets have built a nest in his open mouth, and are crawling about Rick's face, methodically turning it into paper, chewing at the softer tissues, bringing pieces back to their writhing grubs, filling the air with their droning summer buzz.  
  
Dan was prepared for this, but the sight of his dead friend and lover still hits him like a sledgehammer to the chest. "God..."  
  
"No" Freddy purrs, glottal. "That was me..."  
  
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Dan charges the leering bogeyman, spear raised.  
  
Freddy cackles and casually blocks the weapon with his left hand before slashing it in two with the razor-fingers of his right, breaking the point off and catching it in his hands. Before he can rip it out of Dan's grasp though, the young man lets the spear go, steps in close to Freddy than he ever would have thought he'd dare  
  
-and kicks the burned maniac in the balls with all his strength.  
  
Freddy's eyes bug out. He tries to scream, but the pain robs him of everything but a small, teakettle hiss. He drops to his knees with a crash.  
  
Dan kicks him in the face, sending him flying backwards, then grabs the fallen spear and stabs out with it, impaling the stunned creature through the throat. He pushes, and the shaft of the makeshift spear goes right *through* the neck and out the back into the wall, leaving Freddy pinned to it like a bug on a board.  
  
"You fucking bastard!” Dan sobs. "Waiting til Rick and I made love, then killing him when he fell asleep after...” he sneers. “I'm gonna enjoy this."

Careful to stay outside the range of Freddy's wildly wheeling arms, he picks up the other, broken piece of spear from the floor, readies it to plunge into Freddy's seared chest-  
  
-and Freddy laughs. Despite the silt of pain floating in the black swamp of his eyes, the thick, egg-yolk fluid oozing from the hole in his neck, the Dream Demon cackles with wry amusement.  
  
"You've got it wrong, touchdown-boy" Freddy croaks, the vibration of the words making the spear jiggle up and down in his throat. "Your little 'friend'-"  
  
Dan can *hear* the quotation marks-  
  
"-Died by my hand -literally- months ago...Don't you remember the funeral, Dan? Standing over the loam with Alice, holding her hand as they lowered her dear brother -and your fucktoy- into the cold, hard earth?"  
  
Freddy chortles as he sees the memories, the pain, begin to whorl in Dan's face.  "*I've* been dead for months, thanks to your boyfriend's bitch of a sister..."   
  
Freddy's eyes darken at the memory of his shameful defeat by Alice. "This..." he gestures around them, the movement unleashing a fresh flood of foul ichors from his neck. "Is my way of saying "fuck you!"  
  
Dan is shaking his head.  
  
"No..."  
  
-But even as he does, the bathroom around them warps, blackens. The whole room seems to *rust*, pipes corroding, leaking oily steam, tiles running  with mould and rot, morphing and shifting into blood and filth-encrusted wood. The mirrors near the locker room door, into which Dan is staring at his equally horrified reflection, lose their silvered, reflective surfaces and become windows opening onto a night-sky and a darkened front yard set with playground equipment. Blackened boards, nailed in place, slam shut over the windows a moment later.  
  
Dan is back in 1423 Elm Street.  
  
Freddy's house.  
  
Even as Dan starts to back away, keeping his eyes on his feet, knowing the labyrinthine house *wants* him to lose his way, he hears a noise through the nearest window and looks out through a gap in one of the worm-eaten boards.  
  
Five children- all toddler versions of himself, Rick and Alice, are skipping and playing at jump rope in the front yard.  
  
 _"One, Two, Freddy's coming for you...  
Three, Four, Better lock your door;  
Five, Six..."  
_  
The sound of their warbling is odd, distorted, as though they were machines that have gone a long time without being used and are having to warm up before realising their true potential.  
  
"God..." Dan moans. "God, not again..."  
  
"God holds no sway here, boy" laughs the glottal voice. "Welcome to Freddy-land!"  
  
Dan turns back to Freddy, still impaled on the wall. The chanting of the children has become more or less normal now, the Elm Street house fully materialized over the false bathroom dreamscape, and Dan knows that the demon's impossible strength is returning full  
force.  
  
No time, no time...  
  
Echoing his thoughts, a large white rabbit with Rick's face materialises beside him and, glancing at a pocket watch, mutters in panic.  
  
"I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"  
  
Freddy howls and rips the spear free of his neck, tossing it aside with contempt. He puffs his chest out, inhaling, and the hole in his neck seals over, healed. He stares at Dan with unholy glee, catches the Rick-rabbit in his arms, and eviscerates it.  
  
"OFF WITH HIS HEAD!" Freddy roars.  
  
Freddy darts forward. Dan throws the remaining spear-piece at the fried head and simultaneously launches a devastating judo kick at his midsection,  
  
//thanks for the lesson, Rick//  
  
but Freddy just bats the spear point away with a laugh, absorbs the impact of the kick to his chest and *catches* Dan's leg, sinking the razored tips of his finger-knives deep into the calf muscle.  
  
Dan yowls.  
  
Freddy merely grins again then, reaching out with his left hand, grabs the teen by the scruff of his neck and pulls him upward, until he is dangling in the air only an inch from the scarred bogeyman's face.  
  
Gritting his teeth, Dan waits for the cold heat of the four knives ripping through his viscera.  
  
Instead, Freddy cocks his head, thinking for a moment, before grinning then lowering Dan onto his mouth and kissing him wetly.  
  
//Uh! Uh My Go-//  
  
Dan flops about uselessly in the seared vice of Freddy's arms as the horribly burned madman deepens the kiss. Dan tastes old and fresh blood, rancid pus and smoke. The thick, sharp stink of kerosene fills his nostrils and throat and takes his breath away as he struggles to breathe.   
  
Then Freddy slides his tongue into Dan's mouth. The thick, burned muscle slides around his palate and Dan has time to think that even *this* stinks of kerosene, and that it tastes of badly cooked pork, before he vomits down Freddy's throat.  
  
Freddy breaks the kiss at last, leering, idly wiping Dan's vomit from his chin with his left hand and then wiping his hand on his sweater. He casually tosses Dan into a corner, where the teen falls -coughing and clawing at his lips- into a huge pile of burned and eviscerated children's dolls.  
  
"Mmmm-mmm!" Freddy roars, smacking his lips together. "...Good at football *and* tonsil hockey!"  
  
Dan sneers at the capering madman. "Just kill me already, Krueger."  
  
"Kill you?! Awww, Dan..."  
  
-Freddy grabs Rick's corpse and props it on his knee, like a ventriloquist's dummy. When he speaks, Rick's lower jaw opens and shuts, mechanically.  
  
"You got me all wrong, babe!" Rick says with Freddy's voice "I just want us to settle down and be one big, happy family..."  
  
Freddy winks at Dan and drinks from a glass of water whilst Rick continues to speak.  
  
"...Gottle of Geer!"  
  
Cackling, the bogeyman hurls Rick's corpse away into the darkness of the room, where it lands unseen with a dry crack. He turns back to the horrified teen.  
  
"You should know better than to take a *shower* without wearing a *raincoat*, Dan!"  
  
Dan's eyes, widened at the desecration of his friend, now narrow in confusion. "What the fuck are you talking about, you sick frea-"  
  
-A searing pain tears through Dan's bowels.  
  
Freddy leers anew, digging through the contents of Dan's discarded gym-bag. When he pulls his razored claw from its depth, each finger-blade is sheathed by a different coloured condom. "If you weren't prepared for the responsibility that comes with our *love*, you shoulda worn one of these, sweetie..."  
  
The scarred maniac watches gleefully as Dan writhes in pain, as fiery agonies sear through Dan's innards like a swarm of centipedes with their feet dipped in napalm.   
  
Freddy pauses, thinking. "Nah... on second thoughts-on or off Dan, you're still fucked!"  
  
Dan screams as the wall of his muscular stomach *heaves*. It feels for all the world like something alive is inside him, trying to get out.  
  
Trying to be born.  
  
//This isn't happening it's not possible I'm Dreaming//  
  
Another wave of pain... no... not a wave, a *contraction*, and Dan nearly passes out. Blood is pooling in the shallow dip of his navel.  
  
Dan's stomach ripples and surges. The teen can definitely feel something now, pushing at his belly from within.  
  
Something with four, tiny claws...  
  
Freddy hunkers down beside the writhing teen, mockingly wiping  Dan's sweat-drenched brow with his sleeve. The demon shimmers, and the red and green striped sweater vanishes, replaced by mint-green surgical scrubs. The overhead chandelier has become a  
harsh, flood-lit klieg light, and Freddy's razored glove now sports four whirling bone saws instead of knives.  
  
"-Difficult delivery, Dan? Looks like we'll have to do a * _Caesarean_ *!"  
  
-Freddy's bladed fingers gleam as they slash down-  
  
"Dan?!!"  
  
-And Dan jerks upwards with a scream of primal terror as he sits up bolt upright.  
  
  
"*Dan*!"  
  
Thin arms wrap around Dan's heaving body, press on his stomach. Dan bucks reflexively with fight or flight reflex then  
  
//huh??//  
  
his adrenaline-flooded brain registers that the voice yelling his name doesn't sound like it's been gargling with drano, that his belly is no longer roiling with hideous life, that the hand pressing down on him ends in normal, human fingernails rather than bladed claws.  
  
Dan looks about himself. He is in his own bed, in his own house. Freddy is nowhere to be seen, and a careful exploration with shaking fingers reveals no wounds on his body.  
  
And a remarkably thin, surfer-type guy is lying beside him in the bed, fear on his face, his lean, naked body shaking with the effort of restraining the much larger man.  
  
"Jeez, Dan! Are you okay dude?"  
  
"Mmm... Mark?"  
  
Mark Gray smiles tentatively and brushes his purple fringe out of his eyes. "The one and only... Who were you expecting? Alice?! Well, I was gonna dye the hair again this week anyway... I could always do it red..."  
  
Dan rubs a large hand over bleary eyes."No... I... I guess I'm just a bit whacked..."  
  
Mark nods, sympathetically. "No shit- that was some nightmare. I had to shake you for a full five minutes to get you awake, dude. Rick again?"  
  
Dan's head snaps up. "What?"  
  
Mark's smile slips a bit. "I said were you dreaming of Rick again? I mean, I know it's been six months since the accident and all..."  
  
//Accident my...// But Dan stops himself. Mark doesn't know about what really happened. No-one does, except himself and Alice. And Alice isn't talking to him anymore, ever since....  
  
A frown as memory starts coming back from the dark corners it was banished to by the dream.  
  
...Ever since she found out that the guy she had a major crush on was fucking her brother. She'd tried to get back together with him some months after Rick's funeral, but Mark had already been there for Dan, and their friendship had already led to... well, this.  
  
"Yeah..." Dan nods. "It was about Rick."  
  
"Thought so" Mark nods. "Don't worry babe- it'll pass... the pain'll pass..." a beat. “So- who's Freddy?"  
  
"What?!"  
  
"Freddy... you were screaming his name pretty loud there... well, that and a few surprisingly colourful curse words for a football scholarship... I'm guessing he was a nasty Ex?"  
  
Dan, pale again, considers. Mark really doesn't need to know about Krueger. The less he knows, the more likely he is to live a long and happy life.  
  
Mark pulls Dan close, hugs him, and kisses him gently on his brow. "Oh yeah. The nastiest."  
  
Wanna talk about it?"  
  
"God, no."  
  
Mark nods. "I understand; Hey, but if you do, you know I'm here for you, right dude?"  
  
"Thanks.." Dan finally smiles, slightly. "Yeah, thanks man."  
  
Mark grins. "I love you too. Hey- coulda been worse right? You could have dreamt about when Alice found out about you and me, right? Man, I didn't think a human could turn that colour..."  
  
Dan laughs. Louder now. No... Mark didn't need to know about Freddy. The whole dream must have been just that- a dream. Nothing sinister about it... He wasn't cut, was he? Like Mark said, it must have just been some lingering feelings and regrets about Rick.  
  
Still...  
  
"Mark?"  
  
"Yeah babe?"  
  
"I don't really feel like going back to sleep tonight. You wanna..." a smile "...Keep me up?"  
  
The smaller man flashes his fox-in-the-hen house smile again. "Like you even have to ask?"  
  
Both men kiss each other, and then pull up the bedclothes over themselves. Though several giggles and breathy moans can be heard, and the occasional thrashing limbs pokes out from under the blankets, nothing else can be seen of them for a long time after.  
  
Giving up on seeing anymore, deciding she was bored with the display, the little girl in the window turns and runs back out into the street to join the rest of her friends at their skipping game, in front of the creepy old boarded up house that all the kids were too scared to enter.  
  
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you..."  
  
Just for a second she thinks she hears a chuckle, deep and glottal, from the basement. But the sound is not repeated and, in a moment, she has forgotten all about it.  
  
  
  
\-----------------------END----------------------------

 

**Author's Note:**

> Whoo boy. This one came about due to Dan Jordan, the boyfriend of heroine Alice Johnson from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET IV: THE DREAM MASTER, being an early crush of mine, with Rick Johnson coming in a close second. I wrote this ages ago- would have been in the mid Nineties, maybe? And only recently rediscovered it. The sex is waaay explicit- unusual for my fiction- but the dream imagery is, I feel, excellent and some of the set pieces work really well, so I rescued it.
> 
> Special Bonus points to those who know where "John Tate" comes from.
> 
> I am friends with the actors who play the parts on Facebook, and made sure they were okay with this before I posted it up...


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